Joseph Belbruno Blog

  How Ukraine Brought the War to Russia Long-range drone and missile strikes on Russian soil have shifted the balance of the conflict—will they be enough to end it? In recent weeks, Donald Trump—whose attitude toward Ukraine and its President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been notoriously fickle, when not outright hostile —has appeared to warm to Ukraine’s chances in the war with Russia. On the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara , he met with Zelensky and later spoke of him in flattering terms, declaring “We’ve actually developed a good relationship. It’s hard to believe.” Trump has a history of favoring those he perceives as winners, and his change in attitude regarding Ukraine seems driven by the country’s newfound ability to strike targets deep inside Russia—“an escalation that can help lead to an end,” Trump said. In Ankara, Zelensky, the inveterate entertainer, riffed on a question from Trump, who asked if Zelensky would consider travelling to Moscow for direct talks with Russ...

  The Meaning of the Warsh Task Forces Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh didn’t make much news in his testimony to the House on Tuesday, and that’s truth in advertising. The real action at the Fed these days concerns the task forces Mr. Warsh is creating to reform the central bank, and that story isn’t getting the media attention it deserves. The Fed late last week announced the leadership for the five panels Mr. Warsh has formed, each with a specific reform remit. It’s a heavyweight list. Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England and one of the better central bankers of his era, is one of three co-leaders of the panel on Fed communications. Harvard’s Greg Mankiw, who led George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, is one of three on the panel studying how the Fed understands and responds to inflation. Importantly, Mr. Warsh has also turned to the private sector. Former Walmart CEO Doug McMillon has agreed to serve on the panel on economic-data quality. Mr. McMillon r...

  U.S. Steps Up Pacific Presence BY MIKE CHERNEY SINGAPORE—U.S. Coast Guard ships previously deployed in the Middle East are now operating out of Singapore and the Philippines to help challenge China’s assertion of power in the Pacific. The six 154-foot fast-response cutters are part of the Coast Guard’s reimagined “expeditionary cutter squadron,” which can be sent anywhere in the world. Their first deployment is the western Pacific, where tensions have run high for years as China escalated a so-called gray-zone campaign to project control around Taiwan and the disputed waters of the South China Sea. The cutters are approved to operate from Singapore and Subic Bay on the Philippine island of Luzon at least through September, a Coast Guard spokesperson said. While the U.S. previously deployed larger Coast Guard cutters to Subic Bay, a former U.S. military base that faces the South China Sea, it is the first time the smaller, fast-response cutters are operating from there. The Coast ...

  Skip to main content Scientific American July 8, 2026 5 min read Add SciAm A long hunt pays off for targeted autoimmune disease treatments Precision therapies reduce harmful antibodies by disrupting a key cellular recycling pathway A surprising discovery revealed a hidden immune regulator, paving the way for safer, targeted autoimmune-disease therapies. Alisdair Macdonald This article was produced in partnership with argenx by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors. Join Our Community of Science Lovers! On a July afternoon in 1992, a young postdoc came to Richard Blumberg’s office at Harvard Medical School, worried about a lab study. Analyzing cells from an adult human intestine produced an unexpected discovery: the cells contained what Blumberg, a physician-scientist specializing in immunology, soon determined was the neonatal Fc receptor (FcRn), a protein previously found only in newborn rodents. No one had encounter...

  The new minerals diplomacy Beijing’s export controls on rare earths and other niche metals are prompting countries and companies to spend heavily in order to become self-sufficient, with destabilising consequences for markets. Financial Times Europe15 Jul 2026By Cam illa Hodg son In the late 18th cen tury, a Finnish chem ist named Johan Gad olin was sent anunusual black rock dis covered in a quarry in Ytterby, near Stock holm. The find was thought to con tain tung sten, but Gad olin announced it in fact con -tained a “new earth”, a pre vi ously unknown min eral sub stance. “Gad olin’s yttria”would become known as the first dis cov ery of a rare earth com pound, and amongthe ele ments it yiel ded was the sil very metal now known as “yttrium”. Today, yttrium has huge stra tegic value in the pro duc tion of the com puter chipsthat are the back bone of AI. It is also one of the niche metals at the centre of araging geo pol it ical storm. The vast major ity of yttrium, along with many ot...

RATS KEEP DROWNING  China’s GDP Growth Weakens to 4.3%, Below Official Target Range By Bloomberg News July 15, 2026 at 12:00 PM GMT+10 Updated on July 15, 2026 at 12:02 PM GMT+10 Save Translate 2:43 China’s economy slowed more than expected last quarter to the weakest in more than three years, as attention turns to what policymakers will do next to make sure their annual growth goal is met. Gross domestic product grew 4.3% from a year ago, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday, below the bottom of this year’s official target range of 4.5% to 5%. That compares with a 4.5% gain projected by economists polled by Bloomberg, following an increase of 5% in the first quarter. “The economy ran within a reasonable range,” the NBS said in a statement. “There were many instabilities and uncertainties externally, and the supply-demand imbalance was prominent domestically.” China's GDP Growth Slips Below Official Target Range Economy expanded 4.3% in secon...